Plain, Almond and Peanut Butter Christmas Biscuits

Busy, busy, busy. Little elves are running up and down, worrying if they'll manage to finish up all the toys for good children. I am as busy as they are. I've spend a whole day baking star-shaped biscuits in 3 different flavours : plain, almond and peanut butter. The oven has been working all day long without a break and it's proud of what it achieved !
These biscuits are great for getting your family in a christmas mood. They can also be used as a beautiful and edible decoration for your Christmas tree ! Come on ! No time to waste; heat up your oven and let's get this baking started !



Ingredients : Plain Biscuit

- 250g plain flour
- 125g demerara sugar
- 125g softened butter

- 1 roughly beaten egg

Ingredients : Almond Biscuit

- 250g plain flour
- 125g caster sugar
- 125g softened butter
- A tsp of vanilla powder
- A handful of almond sticks
- 1 roughly beaten egg

Ingredients : Peanut Butter Biscuit

- 250g plain flour
- 125g demerara sugar
- 125g softened butter
- 2 tsp of peanut butter
- 1 roughly beaten egg
- black sesame seeds to sprinkle on top



All the flavours follow the same pattern. First, you beat the butter with sugar in a bowl. Then you beat in the egg and the flavouring (vanilla/almonds/peanut butter). Next it's the time for flour. I find it easier when I add the flour bit by bit and also mix it in with my hands. When the dough becomes fairly soft put it onto a floured surface and knead it gently until smooth. Wrap it in a cling film and put it in a fridge for 1,5h-2h to cool.

Heat up your oven to 170°C with a fan. 

On a lightly floured surface roll the dough so it's 0.5cm. Use your cookie cutters to cut out shapes from the dough. Decorate with anything you want but I personally prefer simple almond sticks or almond flakes sprinkled with sugar. Lay the biscuits on a sheet of baking paper that you previously laid on a baking tray. Bake it in the oven for around 8 minutes. Keep checking on the biscuits. They should be ready when the sides are turning golden.

Take them out and let them cool down. They're ready !

If you want the biscuits to also be a decoration for your Christmas tree simply make a small hole on top of a biscuit with an end of a paintbrush. A ribbon will fit through there perfectly. Just tie it and it's ready to hang on your Christmas tree !

I just realised it's 3 a.m where I live and with the last tray of biscuits I also realised how long I have not been sitting. My legs are dying.

I hope you'll like this recipe and have as much fun making those delicious biscuits as I did !

Merry Baking from,

Butterfingered Chef !

Homemade Christmas Muscovado Biscuits

Ho Ho Ho Everyone ! Well, not Ho Ho Ho yet but it's time to start getting ready for Christmas ! Many people are walking around wondering what to buy for their loved ones and find it very difficult. Well, let me make it easier for you. Christmas is about love and spending time with your family and what would ever be a better gift than spending time and energy and putting in all your love in making delicious homemade Christmassy biscuits. Yes ? Great ! Let's start baking ! 

Ingredients :  

- 2 teaspoons baking soda

- 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
- 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger 
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
- 1/2 cup baking margarine at room temperature
- 1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
- 1 cup muscovado sugar (buy 2x500g - the rest will go for making a sugar syrup)
- 1 large egg
- 1/2 cup of sugar syrup 
- dry demerara sugar for sprinkling the biscuits before baking
- baking sheets

Sugar syrup will take a while to make and to cool down. Prepare it before hand. What you need to do is to pour a little bit more  than 1/2 cup of water into a pot and bring it to boil. Then turn the heat to small and start adding sugar bit by bit. Keep stirring ! Your syrup is ready when no more sugar is able to dissolve.

Start of by combining dry ingredients : baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, salt, cayenne pepper and flour together in one bowl. 

In another bowl put butter, margarine and muscovado sugar. 
A tip : don't put massive chunks of butter and margarine in a bowl. Cut them in smaller pieces. If the sugar has bigger chunks in it use a hand potato masher to smash it and mix it with butter before using a mixer. 

Mix the mixture with a mixer until fluffy. It should take around 3-4 minutes. Add an egg and the sugar syrup. To avoid making a mess add the flour mixture bit by bit each time mixing it in with a fork. This way ,when you finally use a mixer on a low speed to combine the ingredients properly together, the flour dust won't go everywhere. 

Preheat the oven to 200°C.

Take a small amount of dough in your wet hands and roll it until round and smooth. Put it on an ungreased baking sheet (place the sheet on a baking tray). Place the dough balls around 4-5cm (aprox. 2 inches) apart from each other. Sprinkle some dry demerara sugar on top of the dough balls. 

Now here comes a tricky part. When I was making my biscuits I had to "feel" my oven. Some of my biscuits burned a little bit when on a certain tray. I had to figure out if they come out better when baked 8, 10 or 12 minutes. Also an important role plays the position you place them in the oven. For me the biscuits came out the best when baked on a teflon baking tray on a top rack  for 8 minutes. I suggest you make sample biscuits and 'feel' the oven. 

After the baking time take the biscuits out and cool them down. They may feel a bit soft 
when straight out of the oven but do not worry they get crunchy when they cool down. 

Now the only thing left to do is figuring out how you want to wrap them up and putting them under a Christmas tree !

I hope you and your loved ones will enjoy this recipe. 

With Love, 

Butterfingered Chef

My First Cake Ever - Carrot Cake !

Today I made my first cake ever and because carrot cake is my favourite I decided that that's what I will try to make. I thought it would be much more difficult than anything else I ever cooked but surprisingly I made it in no time. The recipe is very simple and I think nobody can get it wrong.  

Ingredients for the cake (without the cream): 

- 2/3 glass of flour
- half a glass of sugar
- a teaspoon of bicarbonate
- 3/4 teaspoon of baking powder
- 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon of ground clove 

- 1/4 teaspoon of ground nutmeg
- 1/4 teaspoon of ground allspice
- 1/4 teaspoon of salt
- 1/3 glass of oil of olive
- 2 eggs
- 1 glass of thinly chopped/mashed/ground cashew nuts
- 1 glass of dry cranberry
- 1 glass of grated carrot


Equipment : 
- bakery paper        - baking tin        - hand mixer
   

Cover your baking tin with bakery paper. To make the paper stick to the baking tin butter the tin.

You'll need two bowls. In the first one you'll mix all the dry ingredients. Salt, flour, sugar, baking powder, bicarbonate and all of the spices go to the same bowl.

In the second bowl you'll mix oil of olive and 2 eggs.

Combine the two bowls.

Add the carrot, nuts and cranberry and mix well. Put the mixture into the baking tin and spread evenly.

Bake in the oven at 175ºC for 40-45 minutes.

As you can see I chose a very wide baking tin that is why my cake came out so thin.

Normally it should be much thicker and then you cut in half and in between the top and the bottom you put the cream.

But because my cake is thin I've cut it differently. And then I've but both tops on top of each other.








Cream Ingredients : 

- 300 g of cream cheese
- 6 spoons of butter
- a teaspoon of vanilla extract
- 1 cup of sugar powder (pass it through a sieve)

Mix it with a hand mixer until the texture of it is smooth and without any clumps.

As I told you before my cake came out too thin so I've cut it into two tops. One of the tops will use as the bottom of the whole cake. On this piece I spread a thick layer of cream.

Then I covered the bottom piece with a top piece. The rest of the cream went on the top of the cake.

Decorate your cake with some ground cinnamon and chopped cashew nuts.

Voila !

This cake takes an hour to make and I bet everybody who loves sweets will find it delicious.

If you never tried the carrot cake before trust me it doesn't taste like a carrot. It's sweet, soft, the cranberries add some sourness and the cashew nuts some crunch.

Hope you enjoy it ! 

Butterfingered Chef